


something richer

by allandmore99



Series: nobody know [3]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Communication, Forgiveness, Found Family, Hopeful Ending, Multi, Nicky & Booker Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:41:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29808564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allandmore99/pseuds/allandmore99
Summary: Nicky isn’t sure he’s ready to talk to Booker, but he has something important to tell him.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: nobody know [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2189418
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	something richer

**Author's Note:**

> This probably will make the most sense if you read the first two works in the series first, but I don’t know that it’s strictly necessary :)

Days later, after Nile and Andy had told the whole story over and over again, Nile’s voice catching every time she told about how she had thought Andy was gone for good and Andy beaming with pride every time she told how Nile had dispatched two strike teams on her own with the labrys, Joe laid a hand on Nicky’s arm, gently, as they were sitting in the kitchen alone having a midnight snack. 

“We should tell Booker that Andy got her immortality back,” Joe said softly, and Nicky’s face immediately twisted, as if he’d been sucking on a lemon. “He’s worried about her, I’m sure,” Joe insisted, and Nicky’s hand balled into a fist. “Cazzo, Joe, not only did he betray us, but he shot her,” he reminded his partner. “Do you really think he cares what happens to her?”

Joe wrapped an arm around Nicky’s shoulders, pressing kisses to his lover’s temple until the lemon-sucking face faded slightly. “Nicolò, my love, do not let your hurt blind you. I do not know exactly how he could have done what he did, but then again, we did not give him much of a chance to explain himself. But think, my moon—you know Booker and you know how he feels about Andy. You saw how he tried to protect her, afterwards. You saw how he held her outside the pub. Do you really think he is not torn up with guilt and fear for her, every moment of the day?”

Nicky sighed, slumping into Joe’s hold. “I know that he must be,” he admitted. “But sometimes it’s easier to think he doesn’t care about us at all, because if he does, if he loves us as we loved him, how could he have done something like that?” Joe nudged Nicky’s elbow, smiling gently at him. “Maybe we should ask him that, my heart. What do you think?” Nicky nodded, giving Joe a half smile and a kiss. “I will call our brother tomorrow, hayati,” he agreed. “But I cannot promise how nice I will be to him,” and Joe chuckled. “He will be happy enough just to hear your voice and the good news you have to share with him,” he reminded Nicky.

Nicky kept his promise, and the next day after lunch he walked away from the safehouse, down to the stream in their back garden, and sat on a tree stump, kicking aimlessly at pebbles, and he called Booker. Booker answered on the third ring, and he sounded frantic, because of course he hadn’t been expecting to hear from Nicky and he was assuming the worst. “Nicky? Is everything okay? Is Andy—“ his voice cracked a bit, and Nicky thought, oh. Joe was right. He does care. 

He wasn’t vindictive enough to make Booker worry for too long. “She’s okay,” he assured him. “We’re all okay. She’s....she’s better than okay, actually.” He swallowed deeply, still finding it hard to believe himself, that they might really have centuries more with Andy. “There was a mission, a few days ago. She died and then she came back to life. She’s healing again, Book.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, silence that dragged out so long that Nicky wondered if the connection had dropped. “Book?” He asked, and then he heard a wrenching sob from the other end. “Book?” He asked again, growing concerned. “Merde, I’m sorry,” Booker choked out. “I just...oh, Nicky, is it really true? She’s healing?” “It’s true, Sébastien,” Nicky repeated, startled into gentleness by how destroyed Booker sounded over it. “I wouldn’t lie to you about that. It’s true, she’s alright, she’s healing.” Booker sobbed again, and Nicky could already tell that he wasn’t going to be able to be nearly as harsh as he had wanted to be, not when Booker was breaking down on the other end of the line, not when he was proving Joe right: he clearly cared, a lot more than Nicky had ever realised. 

“I’m sorry for getting so emotional,” Booker apologised through hitching breaths, obviously trying to gather himself together. “I just...I’ve been so worried about her,” he admitted. “About all of you. Fuck, I know I should just thank you for calling and telling me—you don’t know what it means to me, Nicky, I thought I was never going to see her again—and let you go, I know you don’t want to talk to me, but I just....” another muffled sob and the sound of smashing glass. “I miss you all so much and I’m so sorry, Nicky, for everything, je suis tellement désolé”.

Nicky had to take a deep breath to centre himself. “I can tell, Booker, but—how could you do that to us?” He asked, the question that had kept reverberating in his mind since he had realised that Booker had betrayed them. “I know you were hurting, I know we didn’t offer you enough support, and I’m sorry for that. But to offer us up as guinea pigs like that? How could you?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Booker whispered, so quiet that Nicky could barely hear him. “They were supposed to just take samples from the blood we left behind in the kill room. Then, they told me it was too contaminated, so they needed to take us into the lab, but they were only supposed to draw blood and do some scans, that’s all, I promise. I didn’t know they were going to—“ the distant slam of a fist against wood, and Booker’s voice started to break again—“to torture you all, I swear I didn’t—“

Nicky was silent for a long moment, processing, and he picked a dandelion from beside where he was sitting, toying with it and slowly picking off the petals. “I believe you,” he decided. “But Book, you have to know that that doesn’t fix everything. I believe that you didn’t know exactly what was going to happen in the lab, how bad it was going to get. But you still were willing to let someone take samples from us that we didn’t consent to giving. You still shot Andy. You still risked exposing us, rather than coming to us for help.”

“I know,” Booker said in a small voice, and Nicky softened a bit. “I miss you, Sébastien,” he admitted. “I’m still angry with you, and I’m not ready to forgive you yet, but I miss you. Not just these days we’ve been apart, but—even before that, you and I had lost our way. We were so close, when you first joined the team. All our silly bets, all our conversations about our favourite books, arguing over obscure philosophers. I don’t know when we started to pull apart, I didn’t notice it until it had already happened. I should have done more to reach out to you,” he mused.

Booker sighed. “It was my fault,” he insisted. “I...it became difficult, after a while, to watch you and Joe. At first I admired your love—I still do, of course—but to watch you enjoying each other’s company year after year, while my wife’s face and voice faded from my mind—it was so hard, not to be consumed by jealousy. I know you didn’t know my wife, Nicky, but I loved her with all of myself. I loved her like you love Joe, except you have had nine hundred years together and I only had nineteen with her before she died.”

“I’m sorry that I wasn’t more understanding,” Nicky agreed. “I kept comparing your sorrow to mine when I realised I would never see my brothers again, when I heard word that my father had passed away. Somehow that was always the comparison in my mind, to my own mortal family, and I thought that your grief would ease in a few years as mine did. But I did not fully stop and think that for you it was as it would be for me if I—if I lost Joe. That pain...” Nicky shook his head, though nobody could see. “That pain would be unimaginable.”

“It is,” Booker agreed, voice strained but steady, and Nicky sighed, knowing that he needed to make a decision, to take the first step on what he suspected would be a long, long road. He hadn’t known that he was ready to take it until that moment, would have sworn the night before that he wasn’t, but talking to Booker had dislodged something in his heart, and he knew that he was making the right choice. “I can’t speak for the others, but I’m not ready for you to come back, not yet. I don’t think it’ll take a hundred years until I’m ready for that, but I can’t tell you how long it will take. What I can tell you,” he assured Booker, his voice firm, “is that I want to work with you to get there. I want to learn to trust you again, and I want to help you find happiness with us, because we can never replace your family but we are still your family.” He found himself smiling, kicking up pebbles. “I want to argue about philosophy with you again, and trade book recommendations, and lose way too much money to you on pointless bets.”

“I want all of that,” Booker whispered in Italian, and that alone told Nicky that Booker was serious about things, because he never spoke Italian even though he was fluent, some kind of latent French national pride and a grudge from decades-old football matches. “Maybe we could start by talking,” Nicky offered. “And then when we’re ready, we could think about you visiting us, for a few days at first. And then someday you’ll come home,” he said adamantly, and he could hear the sharp inhale Booker gave at that, knew how desperately he wanted to believe it. “We can start now,” Nicky continued, calm now that he had made his decision to start chipping away at their mutual resentment and estrangement bit by bit. “Well, there’s some important team gossip you don’t know,” he began. “It all started when Nile got it into her head that you and Andy were dating....”

It was another thirty minutes later that Nicky hung up the phone with a quiet “Take care of yourself, Booker, I mean it,” and walked back up to the house, a small smile playing on his lips. Joe greeted him at the door and pulled him into a kiss, and Nicky loved the fact that Joe didn’t ask how it had gone, even though he must have been dying to know. “We’ll get there,” Nicky said simply, kissing Joe back and placing a dandelion playfully behind Joe’s ear. “I’ll tell you everything later, cuore, but right now I’m in the mood to roust Andy and Nile out of their love nest, do some light day drinking and get very competitive at board games, what do you say?” Joe laughed, wrapping an arm around Nicky’s waist and walking him into the house. “I say I’d love to as long as you don’t bet all of our prized possessions, last time we played board games Andy trounced us,” he teased, and Nicky knew that there was nothing that their little family could not handle if they were together. 

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been really wanting to do something with Nicky & Booker interaction since there aren’t that many fics with it! Don’t know if there will be more in this series, depends on inspiration, but things are looking up for our little family :)


End file.
